466 Dr. C. I. Forsyth Major — Rodents of W. Mediterranean. 



Gibraltar. — In the " Ossements fossiles " Cuvier reproduces a 

 drawing by Adrian Camper of a specimen from the Gibraltar bone 

 breccia in Camper's collection ; the specimen exhibits two mandi- 

 bular rami of a rodent which Cuvier determined with some doubt as 

 belonging to ' Lagomys.'' ^ Rud. Wagner,'^ as well as Hansel,^ were 

 even more positive than Cuvier in excluding the genus Lepiis in favour 

 of Lagomys. For myself, I have never doubted that the two rami 

 belong to a species of Frolagus, but have refrained from mentioning it, 

 being influenced by the following statement made by George Busk : 

 " We may .... in the absence of further information, 

 perhaps be allowed to doubt whether the specimens in question 

 really came from Gibraltar, where certainly in the enormous mass 

 of bones and breccia examined by Dr. Falconer and myself nothing 

 of the kind has turned up."* Unfortunately very little has been 

 preserved of the " enormous mass of bones and breccia " brought 

 together chiefly by Captain Brome's exertions and forwarded to the 

 Eoyal College of Surgeons.® 



On examining, several years ago, some scanty fragments of bone 

 breccia from the fissure at Rosia Bay, Gibraltar,^ in the collection of 

 the Geological Society of London, and presented by Mr. James Smith, 

 of Jordan Hill, I discovei'ed in one of them (No. 6) the horizontal 

 section of a molar tooth, exhibiting the characteristic pattern of the 

 anterior lower premolar of Prolagus. There is, therefore, no more 

 reason now to doubt of the provenance of Camper's specimens. The 

 dimensions of the tooth — greatest longitudinal diameter = 24 mm. ; 

 greatest transverse diameter (behind) = 2'3 mm. — agree well with 

 the rather large dimensions of the mandibles figured by Cuvier after 

 A. Camper's drawing. 



In the British Museum (Geological Department) is preserved 

 a small bit of stalagmitic breccia, from Gibraltar, according to the 

 information received (the specimen was purchased from a dealer), 

 which contains inter alia a right mandibular ramus of a smaller 

 species of Pro^ag'MS ; this I have named [Prolagus calpensis, s^.n.), 



' Oss. foss., vol. iv, p. 174, pi. xiii, fig. 4 (1823). 

 2 Op. cit., p. 763. 

 ' Op. cit., p. 695. 



* G. Busk, " On the Ancient or Quaternary Fauna of Gibraltar" : Trans. Zool. 

 Soc. Lond., vol. x, p. 58 (1876). 



* " Some of the brightest records of the military glory and prowess of our country 

 are indissolubly connected with Gibraltar. A great nation like England cannot 

 afford to neglect, or disregard without reproach, whatever bears on the natural 

 history or archa3ology of so renowned a possession " (Busk & Falconer, in Quart. 

 Journ. Geol. Soc. London, vol. xxi, p. 368, 1865). Meanwhile, we leave it to 

 French geologists to set us right on the geological age of the ' rock ' (see Suess, 

 "La Face de la Terre," vol. i, p. 229, footnote 4, 1897 ; and Lapparent, " Traite 

 de Geologie," 4th ed., p. 1098, 1900), and to a German malacologist to enlighten us 

 on the recent malacological fauna of Gibraltar (see Kobelt, " Studien zar Zoo- 

 geographie," vol. ii, pp. 225, 243, 1898). And last, not least, we throiv awaij 

 (undeveloped) palreontological collections brought together under exceptionally 

 favourable circumstances by an enthusiastic collector. 



* "From this fissure ton-loads of mammalian remains were obtained dm-ing the 

 scarping of the clitfs, but unfortunately these have long been dispersed ' ' (Ramsay _ & 

 J. Geikie, in "Geology of Gibraltar," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. London, vol. xxxIt, 

 p. 621, 1878). 



